Tony Whyton

From music student to professional: the process of transition

This article addresses the question of whether higher education music courses adequately prepare young musicians for the critical transition from music undergraduate to professional. Thematic analyses of interviews with 27 undergraduate and portfolio career musicians representing four musical genres were compared. The evidence suggests that the process of transition into professional life for musicians across the four focus genres may be facilitated when higher education experiences include mentoring that continues after graduation, the development of strong multi-genre peer networks, the provision of many and varied performance opportunities and support for developing self-discipline and autonomy in relation to the acquisition of musical expertise. Implications for higher education curricula are discussed.

Investigating Musical Performance: Commonality and Diversity among Classical and Non-Classical Musicians.

The research project ‘Investigating Musical Performance: Comparative Studies in Advanced Musical Learning’ was devised to investigate how classical, popular, jazz and Scottish traditional musicians deepen and develop their learning about performance in undergraduate, postgraduate and wider music community contexts. The aim of this paper is to explore the findings relating to attitudes towards the importance of musical skills, the relevance of musical activities and the nature of musical expertise. Questionnaire data obtained from the first phase of data collection (n=244) produced evidence of differences and similarities between classical and non-classical musicians. While classical musicians emphasised the drive to excel musically and technically and prioritised notation-based skills and analytical skills, non-classical musicians attached greater importance to memorising and improvising. Regardless of genre, the musicians all considered practical activities such as practising, rehearsing, taking lessons and giving performances to be relevant. However, while classical musicians attached greater relevance to giving lessons and solo performances, their non-classical colleagues considered making music for fun and listening to music within their own genre to be more relevant. Some underlying processes that may have accounted for the differences in attitudes are explored, including musical influences, age of initial engagement with music and educational background. Points of similarity and differences are discussed, and possibilities for the two musical trajectories to inform and learn from each other are highlighted.

Perceptions and predictions of expertise in advanced musical learners

The aim of this article was to compare musicians’ views on (a) the importance of musical skills and (b) the nature of expertise. Data were obtained from a specially devised web-based questionnaire completed by advanced musicians representing four musical genres (classical, popular, jazz, Scottish traditional) and varying degrees of professional musical experience (tertiary education music students, portfolio career musicians). Comparisons were made across musical genres (classical vs. other-than-classical), gender, age and professional status (student musicians vs. portfolio career musicians). Musicians’ ‘ideal’ versus ‘perceived’ levels of musical skills and expertise were also compared and factors predicting musicians’ self-reported level of skills and expertise were investigated. Findings suggest that the perception of expertise in advanced musical learners is a complex phenomenon that relates to each of four key variables (gender, age, musical genre and professional experience). The study also shows that discrepancies between advanced musicians’ ideal and self-assessed levels of musical skills and expertise are closely related to gender and professional experience. Finally, characteristics that predict and account for variability in musicians’ views and attitudes regarding musical expertise and self-assessments of personal expertise levels are highlighted. Results are viewed in the context of music learning and implications for music education are discussed.

Institutional Culture and Learning II: Inter-Relationships between Perceptions of the Learning Environment and Undergraduate Musicians' Attitudes to Performance.

This paper, following on from our previous paper focusing on findings regarding students’ approaches to learning, explores students’ approaches to performance with particular focus on musical self-efficacy beliefs and experiences of performance anxiety in solo and group performances. The research design included a large questionnaire survey followed up by 13 case study interviews and six focus groups. Survey participants were 170 undergraduate musicians studying in three distinctively different higher education institutions, encompassing classical, popular, jazz and Scottish traditional music genres. Findings suggest that the context of music performance learning and the prevailing institutional culture relate to students’ approaches to performance. By statistically controlling for gender and genre biases across the three institutions, we were able to observe both similarities and differences between students’ self-reported self-efficacy beliefs, as well as experiences, perceived causes and strategies used to cope with performance anxiety. Implications of findings from the two ‘institutional culture and learning’ papers for learners and educators in higher education are discussed.

Birth of the school: discursive methodologies in jazz education

Over recent years, jazz as an academic discipline has grown in volume and stature—indeed, jazz studies now plays a significant role in a number of higher education music programmes within the university and conservatoire sector. The proliferation of jazz education programmes has, inevitably, brought about the publication of specific pedagogical methodologies; from the development of jazz examinations to the widespread dissemination of Jamey Aebersold jazz ‘playalongs’, and the work of the International Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE)—jazz pedagogy is big business. However, whilst providing musicians with opportunities to cultivate and benchmark their skills, the majority of pedagogical publications do not encourage critical engagement with the educators’ methodologies or, indeed, offer dialogues on the nature of jazz education itself. This article begins by examining the politics of music education, the implications of canon forming and icon development in pedagogical practice, and critical attempts to open up the field of study to broader cultural analysis. In this context, I discuss the unique problems faced by jazz education and suggest that these issues are inherently linked to the nature of the music itself. I focus on three areas of significance, which feed off opposing positions in jazz: the ‘value’ of jazz education, geographical divides, and the perceived difference between jazz practice and social theory. My examination of the difficult social and cultural space occupied by education highlights the potential for educational methodologies to disrupt dominant ideologies, and to uncover related cultural myths.

The cultural politics of jazz collectives: This is our music

The Cultural Politics of Jazz Collectives: This Is Our Music documents the emergence of collective movements in jazz and improvised music. Jazz history is most often portrayed as a site for individual expression and revolves around the celebration of iconic figures, while the networks and collaborations that enable the music to maintain and sustain its cultural status are surprisingly under-investigated. This collection explores the history of musician-led collectives and the ways in which they offer a powerful counter-model for rethinking jazz practices in the post-war period. It includes studies of groups including the New York Musicians Organization, Sweden’s Ett minne for livet, Wonderbrass from South Wales, the contemporary Dutch jazz-hip hop scene, and Austria‘s JazzWerkstatt. With an international list of contributors and examples from Europe and the United States, these twelve essays and case studies examine issues of shared aesthetic vision, socioeconomic and political factors, local education, and cultural values among improvising musicians.

Song of praise : musicians, myths and the "cult" of John Coltrane

This book explores popular music fandom from a cultural studies perspective that incorporates popular music studies, audience research, and media fandom. The essays draw together recent work on fandom in popular music studies and begin a dialogue with the wider field of media fan research, raising questions about how popular music fandom can be understood as a cultural phenomenon and how much it has changed in light of recent developments. Exploring the topic in this way broaches questions on how to define, theorize, and empirically research popular music fan culture, and how music fandom relates to other roles, practices, and forms of social identity. Fandom itself has been brought center stage by the rise of the internet and an industrial structure aiming to incorporate, systematize, and legitimate dimensions of it as an emotionally-engaged form of consumerism. Once perceived as the pariah practice of an overly attached audience, media fandom has become a standardized industrial subject-position called upon to sell box sets, concert tickets, new television series, and special editions. Meanwhile, recent scholarship has escaped the legacy of interpretations that framed fans as passive, pathological, or defiantly empowered, taking its object seriously as a complex formation of identities, roles, and practices. While popular music studies has examined some forms of identity and audience practice, such as the way that people use music in daily life and listener participation in subcultures, scenes and, tribes, this volume is the first to examine music fans as a specific object of study.

Coltrane and Beyond

Welcome to the second special issue of the Jazz Research Journal focusing on John Coltrane. As a complement to the previous collection of writings, this issue explores both the musical practices and interdisciplinary contexts for Coltrane research, with contributions examining the artist’s life and music from a variety of unique perspectives. As an iconic jazz musician, Coltrane’s influence on the worlds of music, art and poetry has been profound and ‘Coltrane studies’ can now be considered a truly interdisciplinary and established research field. This issue further demonstrates the breadth of perspectives and disciplinary reach of Coltrane scholarship, following the 2007 International Coltrane Colloquium at the University of Tours.

John Coltrane: the work and its legacy

Welcome to the first of two special issues of the Jazz Research Journal focusing on the music and legacy of John Coltrane. 2007 witnessed several publications and events that commemorated the 40th anniversary of Coltrane’s death, each in their own way designed to examine the impact and influence of this iconic artist on jazz past and present.1 Today, the impact of Coltrane’s life and music can still be seen across literature, visual arts and performance, and a sizeable body of published work offers insights into the artist’s music, spirituality, politics and cultural influence. It is within this context that we felt that a themed issue would not only be timely, capturing some of the most recent insights into Coltrane’s music, but also of significant interest to our multi disciplinaryreadership. Featured articles in this issue were originally presented at the Colloque International John Coltrane, University of Tours, in November 2007. Following the event, the conference organizer and musicologist Vincent Cotro contacted the Jazz Research Journal to discuss the possibility of featuring papers which had been presented during the two-day event. Subsequently, several researchers were invited to expand their work and submit articles to the Jazz Research Journal for peer review. As Cotro states below, research sessions and panel discussions raised a number of critical issues that exceeded the initial boundaries of the colloquium. Contributors therefore had the opportunity to draw on the broader outcomes of the event in developing their work for publication. As a point of departure for our readers, Cotro has written the following contextual outline of the Colloque International John Coltrane alongside an introduction to the contributions to this issue.

Four for Trane: Jazz and the Disembodied Voice

This article comments on the paradoxical nature of new art and its relationship to technology, and discusses the impact of iconic recordings on contemporary performance habits. Using four examples of iconic media associated with John Coltrane, I construct a model from which to examine current trends in jazz performance that are influenced both directly and indirectly by recordings. I open with a discussion of how the jazz icon‐audience relationship is affected by recordings and draw on examples to illustrate how records can either contribute to the mystery and magic of performance or create a sense of unease in listeners through conscious awareness of the disembodied voice. The latter point is emphasised through a study of constructed iconic presence, using the sound of John Coltranes spoken voice in an interview conducted by Carl‐Erik Lindgren in 1960.  Conversely, the study moves on to demonstrate how acts of recorded jazz performance have the potential to instil music with a sense of mystery. Within this context, I include quotation, transcription, study aids, historical re‐enactments, and musical tributes under the same theoretical model, highlighting the influence of iconic presence on contemporary performance practice. I go on to demonstrate my theoretical model in practice, using both the Jamey Aebersold produced/Andy LaVerne ‘play‐along’ Countdown to Giant Steps and Branford Marsaliss Footsteps of Our Fathers album as examples.